Andre Dubus; Writer of Short Stories and Essays

HAVERHILL, Mass. â€”  Andre Dubus, a writer of short fiction and essays whose works centered on rough and ragged New Englanders and his own struggle after a crippling accident, has died. He was 62.

The author of 11 books and a contributor to periodicals such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, Dubus died of a heart attack Wednesday evening, according to a representative of Alfred A. Knopf, his publisher.

Born in Lake Charles, La., Dubus was educated at McNeese State College and the University of Iowa. In the mid-1960s, he took a job teaching modern fiction and creative writing at Bradford College in Massachusetts. His first book, “Separate Flights,� a novella and seven short stories, was published in 1975. Robert Kirsch, the late Los Angeles Times book critic, said the collection “restores faith in the survival of the short story.�

Dubus’ life took an unexpected turn when he stopped on a highway in July 1986 to help a woman and her brother who had been in an auto accident. The next thing he knew, a car was coming toward them. Dubus pushed the woman out of the way, but he and the other man were struck. The man was killed, and Dubus was severely injured. Eventually his left leg was amputated and he was left in a wheelchair.

Writers such as John Irving, Stephen King, John Updike and Kurt Vonnegut held public readings to help raise more than $100,000 to cover Dubus’ medical bills.

Dubus said the accident and the ordeal of recovery helped him to perceive the inner ugliness of humanity with special acuity: “Living as a cripple,� he wrote in “Broken Vessels,� a 1992 collection of autobiographical essays that was a a Pulitzer Prize runner-up, “allows you to see more clearly the crippled hearts of some people whose bodies are whole and sound.�

He recorded his years of grief and self-pity in a book of essays published last year, “Meditations From a Movable Chair.�

He is survived by six children, including novelist Andre Dubus III.